Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leaderoffers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs.
Read more
To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday—and he presents each child a present, just like Santa.
The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries—with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.
Liked Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters Shares North Korea, nonfiction, Korea -
North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea Shares North Korea, nonfiction, Korea -
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag Shares North Korea, nonfiction, Korea -
The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom Shares North Korea, nonfiction, Korea
“People who read Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (history about politics), start with these.”
- A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand's Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
-
This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
-
North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society
-
Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language
